


we can pretend that they don't know our name

by cicer



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 00:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicer/pseuds/cicer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where your soulmate's name appears on your wrist as soon as they are born, Steve's wrist has been blank his whole life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we can pretend that they don't know our name

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/3266.html?thread=1797314) on the Avengers kink meme.

He never told Bucky how much it hurt every time he looked down at his thin, weak hands and caught another glimpse of his right wrist. It sneaked up on him sometimes. He’d be feeling all right, washing the supper dishes or sketching out the lines of a building. Then he’d happen to look down and he’d see the inside of his wrist, the blue veins spidering their way up his forearm, and absolutely nothing but pale, unmarked skin.

Bucky knew anyway, or maybe he just heard the deeper echo behind Steve’s words whenever he protested Bucky setting him up with yet another girl. 

_C’mon, Rogers. You’ll like this one, she’s a painter. And artist like you, you’ll have lots to talk about. Tell her you wanna draw her, huh?_

Bucky would bump against his shoulder, raise his eyebrows meaningfully. And Steve... Steve would shake his head, look away. Stuff his hands in his pocket so nobody could see what wasn’t there, what wasn’t written on his skin where it was supposed to be. 

Sometimes Bucky let it go, but sometimes he pressed. One day they had been walking together and out of the blue he pulled Steve into an alley, his face tense in a way Steve had never seen before. His hand gripped Steve’s shoulder, almost painfully hard. 

(Sometimes Bucky forgot to be careful, and Steve never reminded him.) 

He leaned right into Steve’s space and whispered, low and urgent, _Look, Steve, you don’t know how lucky you are. You don’t have to worry about being faithful, or any of that. You can date whoever you want, do whatever you want, no guilt. You don’t have anything to worry about._

The inside of Bucky’s wrist read _Patricia Louise Hartley_. Slow, leisurely script, feminine but relaxed. If what some people said was true, that you could tell the character of the person by the way their name looked on their partner’s skin, then Pattie was a breezy, cheerful sort of dame, fun-loving and ladylike all at once. Just right for Bucky.

Steve tried not to be jealous, and most of the time he wasn’t. Bucky was his best friend, his _only_ friend, and of course Steve wanted good things for him. It just seemed sometimes like all their luck, his and Bucky’s, had been rolled into one, and it had all gone to Bucky.

 

***

 

When the treatment was over, when they got him out of the machine and he could breathe again, the first thing he did was check his wrist. It didn’t make any sense, of course. There was no reason why there should be a name there now, if there hadn’t been one before. The serum changed the body, not fate itself. 

Still, there was a fragile but determined bubble of hope in Steve’s chest when he looked down. In that moment, he wanted more than anything to see _Margaret Anne Carter_ on his wrist. The writing would be angular, sharp, and excruciatingly tidy, just like Peggy.

But there was nothing. Disappointment welled up, but the rest of the experiment had been a success. He’d gained seven inches and eighty pounds; he could run three miles flat-out without even getting winded; he could lift a piano like it was a kid’s toy. Steve told himself he had no right to be disappointed.

 

***

 

His mom never told him what she thought of his empty wrist. Sometimes when she squeezed his hand her thumb would linger there, brushing the bare patch of skin, and Steve thought she looked sad. But she never said anything about it. 

When she was on her deathbed, she took his hand and gripped it. Her hand was hot and sweaty, weak from the fever, but she looked at him with clear eyes. _You’re going to do great things, Steven._ She held him tight. Her nails dug into his skin. _You’re going to be just fine. Better than fine._

 _You’re strong,_ she said. 

She didn’t say, _strong enough to go it alone,_ but that was what she meant. She didn’t look at his wrist, and that was the last thing she said to him before the priest came. 

She died quietly, not too long after that, and Steve buried her in the little graveyard by the neighborhood church. There was a gravestone for his father there, too. His mother had saved up for months, when he was little, to buy it. There was no body in the ground. That had been too wrecked to ship back to the States. She’d been strong too, his mom. She’d had to go it alone, from the day her husband enlisted.

For the first time, the _only_ time, Steve thought that maybe he was lucky. His mother had had a name on her wrist, and she’d married the man who’d had her name on his. People would say that made her lucky, but she hadn’t been married two years before she lost him, and a new name never appeared on her wrist. 

It wasn’t any kind of guarantee, having a name, and Steve thought that maybe, if he was just going to end up like his mom, losing someone right after he found them, then he was better off.

 

***

 

When Bucky fell, Steve thought what he felt must be like what other people feel, when they lose the person whose name has been etched on their skin since birth. He never loved Bucky like that, but what he had with Bucky was the only real, soul-deep connection he ever had to another person, even if that connection wasn’t the kind people wrote love songs about. 

But it’s all Steve has ever had, and Steve realized pretty quick that it’s probably all he’s _ever_ going to have. 

The only people who would want him now wanted Captain America. They didn’t want the skinny kid from Brooklyn. They didn’t know that Steve Rogers, and they never would. Bucky was the only one who thought that dumb, scrawny kid was worth his time. Now he’s gone, and it’s like another part of Steve has disappeared, eaten up by the uniform and the shield. 

In his less maudlin moments, Steve could admit it was all for the best. It wouldn’t be fair to expect someone with a name on their wrist to make the same sacrifices he had to make. He thought about that every time he led his men out on another mission. He thought about how he had to bring all of them back safe, because they had mothers and fathers back home, but they also had someone out there who saw their name every time they looked at their wrist. 

Steve didn’t know what that was like, but he could imagine. He could imagine what it would be like to turn on the radio or look at the papers, to see another city torn to shreds, and wonder if the person who carried your name was out there when it happened. So he had to bring his men home safely, so they could find that person, and if he didn’t make it home himself, well.

He didn’t have a home anymore, really. His mother was dead. His father was dead. Bucky was dead, and his Pattie-Lou was never going to meet him. There was nobody waiting for Steve.

There was Peggy, of course, and she was beautiful. She was smart, and funny, and had more guts than any woman he’d ever met. But underneath the thin leather-banded watch she always wore, Steve could see the scrawl of name, and he knew it wasn’t his. 

When he drove the plane into the water, he knew Peggy was crying, but there was someone out there who was waiting for her. She’d find them, someday. 

In the last moment before the impact, Steve snapped his compass shut, so he didn’t have to look at Peggy’s face smiling up at him. He didn’t deserve to see her smile. 

It wasn’t meant for him.

 

***

 

He woke up to a sterile room, a recorded game on the radio, and a new century. Then he was running and he didn’t stop until he was surrounded by crowds and flashing lights. He didn’t stop running until he couldn’t anymore.

It wasn’t until they were packing him back into the car, in the middle of a Times Square he didn’t recognize, that he saw it.

There, on the inside of his right wrist, etched in deep like it had always been there:

_Anthony Edward Stark_

**Author's Note:**

> Gonna do another part from Tony's POV, but I'm not sure when I'll have that up. Hang tight!


End file.
